The debate which surrounds sensitive issues on marriage and migration is too important to be handled in a way that misleads people. I did not say British Asians should confine arranged marriages to partners already living here, as the first sentence in your front-page lead said yesterday (Blunkett in clash over marriages, February 8).

The white paper, Secure Borders, Safe Haven, says: "We [also] believe there is a discussion to be had within those communities that continue the practice of arranged marriages as to whether more of these could be undertaken within the settled community here." To call for a discussion is not to tell people what to do.

If we mean what we say in treating each other with dignity and as equal members of an integrated community, then the freedom to think, speak or ask others to discuss such issues must be part of that grown-up mature world. David Blunkett MP Home secretary

I am a British person of Indian origin. A few years ago, I married a man from a small village in another country, whose mother tongue is not English. Before our marriage, he had at most spent a few weekends in Britain and when he arrived, there was no guarantee that he would find a job here.

Culturally, our upbringings were not at all similar and he still finds many norms in this country quite strange. However, since he is white, Swedish and wrote his PhD in English, perhaps Mr Blunkett won't mind too much. Sushuma Chandrasekhar London

David Blunkett's assumption that all overseas marriages are contracted into in order to circumvent immigration laws is racist and echoes the primary purpose rule. In recent debate, even the government admits most arranged marriages are genuine. In this case what right has David Blunkett to interfere with people's civil liberties in deciding who and where they should marry? Anita Johal Southall Black Sisters

By coincidence, claims that the home secretary is interfering with cultural traditions came on the day that you reported the case of an Asian man whose defence to the charge of stabbing his daughter to death is that his religion demands it. Surely this highlights the problem. David Blunkett must be given credit for trying to close the gulf between the individual values of our multicultural ethnic identities and the desire for a socially and racially inclusive single nation. Roger Munday Hebden Bridge West Yorkshire